What if the party’s paymasters say he has to go?

The founder of the MORI polling organisation, Bob Worcester, has made the most astute observation on a day that has been dominated by the future of Gordon Brown.

In a Radio 4 interview he said that it wasn’t the men in grey suits “that Brown has to look out for, it’s the men in black suits, from the trade unions, as they are the paymasters now..The party is skint, and if they say he goes, he goes.”

For in the explosion of media speculation about Brown’s tenure at Number 10 Worcester is the only one I have heard who has linked it to the party’s very serious financial problems.

This must be right. Things are reported to be so precarious that if the heads of the half dozen major unions threatened to pull the plug then Brown would have no real alternative. As we have seen in recent weeks they’ve come to recognise the leverage that they have but until now the focus has been on the policy changes that they want.

It’s not a big step to move from policy to the leadership itself. If they are convinced that Labour could do better with somebody else then Gordon is doomed.

Mike Smithson